AS THE DEMOCRATS got down to tariff making, petitions poured in with
every mail not only to testify to the correctness of General Hancock's
epigram that the tariff was a local issue but also to point the truth that
reform had its own skeletons in the closet. The sentiment for free raw
materials was strong in New England; yet that section demanded even
higher rates for most of its manufactures. New Englanders would
gladly consent to the remission of duties on Pennsylvania iron, West
Virginia coal, and Louisiana sugar, provided that duties were retained
on their own textiles, leather goods, metal products, and novelties;
farmers demanded free salt for their flocks and herds but protected
butter, protected hides, and a protected wool clip; and transcontinental
railway interests, notably the Southern Pacific, favored free coal from Mexico, British Columbia, and Australia for their engine tenders west
of the Mississippi River, but for their Eastern lines, which enjoyed the
heavy tonnage of the Appalachian bituminous fields, they demanded
retention of the existing duty of seventy-five cents per ton as a buffer
against New Castle importations.1
These communications left little
room to doubt that tariff reform stemmed as much from self-interest
as from high principle. A. B. Farquhar, a Pennsylvania manufacturer of
farm machinery, who argued for free raw materials, declared:

Which way our interests point is . . . plain enough. I have no occasion to
deny that my zeal for tariff reform in a larger sense is strengthened by
this consideration; for when one's interest is identical with that of the
great mass of his fellow-countrymen, enlightened selfishness becomes
truest patriotism.2

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